You Scratch Our Back, We’ll Break Yours

Maybe Wal-Mart doesn’t understand how products are made.

In Wal-Mart’s world, suppliers make products for Wal-Mart because the pleasure of working with Wal-Mart is so great. In fact, the less profit a supplier makes from working with Wal-Mart, the greater pleasure! That must be why when Wal-Mart demanded suppliers improve their “sustainability” and “safety”, Wal-Mart said it will not pay for these increased costs. Rather, Wal-Mart said it would reward compliant factories with longer contracts of the same low-priced orders.

But in the real world - where people have responsibilities outside of their contracts with Wal-Mart (like feeding their families) - suppliers are ailing. Many report that Wal-Mart has failed to take into consideration reality - that costs of raw materials and manufacturing have increased substantially. Many suppliers are being forced to “either supply Wal-Mart goods while not raising prices and wait to die or raise the prices and court death.”

To make reality just a little more grim, Wal-Mart is now demanding that suppliers implement radio frequency identification (RFID) to replace bar codes. According to reports, implementing RFID will increase the cost burden on suppliers by 20 times the cost of the currently used bar code. While the suppliers are left to figure out how to pay for the increased cost, Wal-Mart is expected to save $8.35 BILLION each year.

As we’ve seen, coercing suppliers to produce at below cost forces suppliers to abuse labor and use inferior materials - thus creating Wal-Mart’s real need to increase sustainability and safety.

If Wal-Mart wants real, sustainable change, Wal-Mart needs to put the money behind it. Until then, we all lose.

Posted by Michael Mignano on Friday, November 07, 2008

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COMMENTS

Aren’t the standards Wal-Mart demanded in its sustainability conference exactly what you people want?

Someone in USA
Saturday, November 08 at 02:23 AM

RFID-Biometrics

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RFID ‘Mark of the Beast’ Lawsuit
Published on 15-11-2008

The Bush administration on Thursday urged a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a group of Amish farmers in Michigan claiming RFID chips required on cattle “are a mark of the beast.”

The Amish farmers claim (.pdf) Michigan regulations requiring them to use radio frequency identification devices on their cattle “constitutes some form of a ‘mark of the beast’ and/or represents an infringement of their ‘dominion over cattle and all living things’ in violation of their fundamental religious beliefs,” according to the farmers’ lawsuit filed in September in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

In response to the charges, the United States Department of Agriculture wrote (.pdf) Thursday that its RFID tagging program is a voluntary measure to help agricultural officials track bovine and other livestock diseases. The USDA said the lawsuit should be directed at Michigan, which adopted RFID requirements last year.

The farmers contend the program is a USDA mandate because the Michigan law was adapted last year as part of a multi-million dollar, federally backed grant program to help eradicate livestock disease.

As radio frequency identification devices become a daily part of the electronic age, RFID technology is increasingly coming under fire for allegedly being the mark of Satan. The technology is fast becoming a part of passports, payment cards, locking devices and is widely expected to replace bar-code labels on consumer goods.

The Virginia-based Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, a 1,400-member group, brought the case. Some of its members so staunchly oppose the program that “they may have to quit farming,” according to the lawsuit.~~~~~~~~~

ddrb in
Sunday, November 16 at 09:23 AM

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